meaning in the moving design

I find myself constantly oscillating between these two, no three feelings:

1. that, like Freddie Mercury so wisely declares in Bohemian Rhapsody, "Nothing Really Matters..."

2. that, in a very real and humbling and raw way, my life is what I make it... so I better get making, gonsarnnit. And it's this compulsion, of always wanting/needing to prove that to myself, of having this visible, discernable record of my evolving/devolving Self-making, that drives these nonsensical weirdo adventures of mine. Epileptic fits of willful displacement. Pedal terrets syndrome. I have this belief (and I know it's wrong) that the life I make in Toronto has too many helping hands, that it's like cheating. And... if I really mean it, if I really believe that I'm good enough and smart enough, then I have to start fresh. with nothing. See what art I can make with these humble hands. It's part personal validation, part arrogant conviction, that I can do anything and be anything... that it's not for lack of skill and ability, only will and motivation.

3. that life is for playing/trying/experimenting. And my personal mission is to play/try/experiment the hell out of life. RE: 1.

This is me. It kinda freaks me out how stubbornly I believe this shit, but I do. I take myself way too seriously. And I take my life not seriously enough.

I keep forgetting that I'm an absolute weather curse. The day I arrive in Taipei is the first day of rain it's seen all winter. It lasts for a week. Today is the first day of no rain! That's worth writing about. So, intial thoughts:
On the Western--Asian continuum (draw a line...), Taiwan (or more specifically, Taipei) is about 5 steps forward and 2 steps back. The public toilets are squats... but they have toilet paper and flushers. There are crazy markets that sell anything and everything... but no one haggles or cheats you. There is crazy traffic... but everyone obeys the traffic signals. There are massive amounts of people... but the Taiwanese have an almost cultish obsession with line-ups and orderliness ([tangent]... and umbrellas!! note to self- find out if it's considered "bad luck" to refuse someone's umbrella shelter). It's by far the most "modern" Asian city I've ever been to, so in that regard, the culture shock is not particularly shocking at all.

My first reaction walking down the streets of Taipei was that I was in a Chinatown that never ended; my first thought was that all the signs were mocking my failure as a child to learn how to read and write chinese, and if only I'd spent all those Saturday mornings getting to Chinese school on time instead of watching the second half of Gummi Bears, oh what a wonderfully easy place this would be to navigate today. But alas kids, I am but an illiterate faux-Chinese Canadian. The general reaction to me and my non-chinese speaking ways from the locals is of slightly-annoyed disbelief. They can't understand why I am speaking to them in baby-talk. I've found that it's easier to say I am Cantonese than Canadian... less confusion. That's probably not going to help me at all when I start teaching.

Surprisingly, I am learning to read faster than I am learning to speak, at least so far. This is because all the menus are written in Chinese, and you know, a girl's gotta eat. In canteens, or restaurants, you just check off a dish and hand it in, no talking. Now if the whole menu is written in a language you can't read, well, you just have to kinda resort to some craftiness. Example: Point emphatically to something that looks yummy. Draw or mime the item you wish to consume. Stalk the kitchen staff until they bring something tasty out, then hand them a menu and pencil and nodd vigorously... that one's my favourite- more exercise for your meal!!

I am out of Taipei now. In a small, small town. I think I'm close to the pinky finger of nowhere. Small, did I mention? But that... for another day.

Ah, fridge poetry! How wise thou art!
This guy has been sitting idly on my wall for at least a year, maybe two. It wasn't true until 2007, methinks. I was idle shitless last year... time to stir the boat! Adventures ahoy!

Happy New Year! If this entry seems muddled, you can blame it on sleep deprivation....

let's try explaining the title here. I'll start by quoting something I wrote in my journal when I was 15 years old. I said "My purpose in life is to understand what it means to be human". I don't think I knew what the fuck I was talking about back then, I just knew it sounded pretty and left it at that... so am I more or less pretentious now, because I actually believe that line, and really feel like that's what my life's about?
Ok, so I'll describe myself here as passively self-absorbed, which in layman's terms, really just means I'm neurotic, and in positive-spin terms, means that I devote a lot of time to my Self as a project- figuring out who I am, why I am and what I can be if I knew the answers to the first two. I find these questions fascinating, not just in the context of me, but in everyone I meet, and how they have come to be the person that they are. And because I think about it so much, I also have really high-fallutin' ideas about how this thing called the Self comes to be.

Imagine the action of drawing an infinity symbol. I liken our lives to the constant retracing of the design- always moving, finding new experiences, changing or tweaking our characters, but always circling back on the same design. taking all the new stimulus and showing it to the older parts of ourselves and seeing what fits. And just as on paper, when you retrace the same design over and over again, the first few tracebacks looks flimsy, like you can blow them off the page. But after a while, it becomes solid, it has weight; it is meaningful despite the flux of change, or maybe even because of it.

Each one of us is a complex set of genetics and circumstance. There are finite things things that we are born into (sex, age, genetic dispositions). There are social givens (birth order, family dynamics, class, race). And there are the things in between, the experiences that happen to you and you alone; that are given more or less weight because you are who you are; that changes your beliefs and values in big and little ways; that frame your perspective for other experiences that may not otherwise mean anything to you. We are at each moment looking ahead and behind- our history frames the way we interpret/absorb new stimulus, and in turn, that experience reshapes the way we will frame our next experience.

And when I say stimulus, I guess I could be talking about a bunch of things, but mainly I think I'm talking about people ie. the way I interact with others, or what I see in the way people interact with each other. I think of everyone I interact with as a mirror to myself- they reflect me, but the interaction is a constant play of our respective selves, a moving feedback loop.
Example.
I'm starting a conversation with someone, let's call him Ike. I'm being 'me', but Ike is seeing the 'me' in him; his interpretation of me is mixing with all his Ikeness. And then, as we interact, he is spitting that new 'me' (the Ike-ified 'me') back out at me, and I begin to see Ike's 'me'. And maybe Ike's 'me' and my 'me' have a little joust; maybe a love affair, but more often than not, they just kinda stand awkwardly beside each other and suddenly there are two 'me's. And three and four, and so on for every person I meet.

We all know this intuitively. One group of friends may see us as one person, another group as someone entirely different. We'll play up certain parts of our personality for certain people, hide things for others. All true, every Self a true self. I don't speak to any of my high school friends anymore, but when I did, I always felt like they were speaking to the 15-year-old-me, and I would have to confront the teenage me in all of our conversations. Now that I don't speak to them, I get anxious because I feel like I've erased part of my past, because I no longer have any 'mirrors' to tell me who I was.

I suppose there are good and bad aspects to this, but for the most part, the strange loops benefit me. People... generally like me, and so the strange loop reminds me of things that I sometimes forget I am, or it gives me confidence in certain qualities of myself that other people see, but I can't. In darker days, when I had anxiety attacks, I would always seek out a friend to 'watch me'. They didn't have to speak to me, I just couldn't be alone. I needed someone who knew me to... affirm my existence or something. I had no 'inner eye', I needed someone around who could see me, because I couldn't see myself, and I would have this crazy fear that if no one was around, that I would disappear. or something.

But the best part is being able to read the subtext- figuring out who they are by what they think I am (... catch that? yeah that's right, I'm onto you)

So this is learning at its root for me. I am a learning sponge, and everyone I meet is my teacher. My project is the study of my Self, and by extension, the study of everyone else, because we are connected. People affirm my existence, and people are the well of experience that constantly remake me. When I meet people, the philosophical pretense is always like "ok, who are you and what can you or your life teach me about me and my life?". It sounds like a heavy burden but it's not. I just like listening to people talk about their lives. And I like listening to people think about their lives as they're talking about it, like eavesdropping on the self-reflective moment. On the selfish tip, I secretly think that how other people live will lead to some small insight about my life. And if not, well, at least it was an interesting story.